If your husband filmed you with a hidden camera, you could be a victim of trafficking. Dani Pinter is Senior Legal Counsel for the National Center on Exploitation. The National Center on Exploitation was founded in 1962, and is the leading national nonpartisan organization. They expose the links between all forms of exploitation. Such as CSCAM, prostitution, trafficking, and the public harms of online explicit material.

If you are a victim of exploitation and would like to reach a representative from NCOSE. Please email public@ncose.com or call (202) 393-7245.

To discover if your husband is emotionally abusing you, take this free emotional abuse quiz.

If Your Husband Filmed You With A Hidden Camera, You’re A Victim Of Domestic Abuse

Too often, men betray and exploit their wives. Husbands have victimized members of The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Community. By uploading explicit videos to websites. Women request them to take these videos down. Users download videos and the video will continue to resurface. This re-traumatizes victims over and over again.

The Necessity To Hold P__nhub Accountable

The trauma that P__nhub victims experience is horrific and never-ending. Organizations like NCOSE recognize that exploitation is financially profitable. The organization itself isn’t reliable to self-police. That’s why NCOSE is calling on all credit card companies to stop processing payments for P__nhub.

How Can We Seek Justice for P__nhub Victims?

It’s not only large organizations and legislative decisions that can effect P__nhub’s accountability.

You can help, too.

• Support the EARN IT act, which would hold “all platforms responsible” for child abuse material (CSAM).
• Go to sexualexploitationlawsuits.com if you have been a victim of exploitation. And begin the process of seeking justice for yourself.
• Refuse to use online explicit material and share your knowledge of its exploitative nature with others.

Exploitation is traumatizing. If you are a victim of exploitation, you deserve justice and a safe place to process your trauma. Attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session today, find the community you need to begin your healing journey.

Transcript: If Your Husband Filmed You With A Hidden Camera

Anne: I have Dani Pinter on today’s episode. She is Senior Legal Counsel for the National Center on Exploitation. The National Center on Exploitation was founded in 1962. It is the leading national non-partisan organization exposing the links between all forms of exploitation. Such as child abuse, prostitution, trafficking, and the public harms of online explicit material. And they have some amazing campaigns to stop the harm.

Today, we’ll talk about a New York Times article that revealed that P__nhub profits from child abuse material. And we call the national center on exploitation, NCOSE for short. NCOSE is calling on the Department of Justice to investigate P__nhub. NCOSE has been supportive of revoking the immunity that digital platforms use to avoid accountability. And is urging Congress to pass the Earn It Act. They have a blog post about this.

Today, NCOSE is calling on all credit card companies to cease processing payments for P__nhub. And Dani Pinter is the lawyer for one of the survivors mentioned in the Times piece. So I invited her today to talk about this specific issue, what NCOSE is doing, and what you can do to help. Okay, so to start, Dani, can you summarize the New York Times story for our audience?

Dani: Sure, so Nick Kristof is an excellent journalist and reporter. What he did was highlight the reality that P__nhub’s not just a explicit materials site. This platform hosts real rape videos. And real videos of exploitation and abuse of children. They also host. He did this through some examples he discovered, and also through the stories of some of those survivors.

Anne: The article related to this podcast episode is on our website.

Survivors’ Ongoing Struggles

Anne: So as the lawyer for one of the survivors , what challenges are these survivors facing? Including those who’s intimae partner filmed them with a hidden camera?

Dani: One survivor said their abuse never ended because of P__nhub. Which is one of the biggest and most poignant things. Each survivor’s story is different. But they face some sort of exploitation, whether that was violent r_pe, child abuse or trafficking. And even when that horrific trauma ended. It lived on in eternity, because it was recorded and uploaded to P__nhub.

And for my client, that has meant these videos and images have spread all over the internet. She feels helpless to get rid of them, and faces them every day. She reached out to P__nhub and others and asked them to bring these videos down. They distributed it without her consent. Because she was trafficked. But she was a minor. So this is CSCAM actively online on P__nhub available for free.

You can Google the site, go on it, and reach it in seconds. P__nhub also allows this for download. So even though it was completely non-responsive to some victims. They took down videos Nicole asked them to take down. Only for them to resurface again and again.

Anne: Because someone had downloaded and re-uploaded it?

https://youtube.com/shorts/mHgIHT2Dtrw

Dani: Yes, so P__nhub claims they use this cutting edge photo DNA technology. So banned videos can never re-enter the site. But Nicole is living proof that’s not true. Her videos and images are re-uploaded time and time again.

Anne: What are potential solutions for helping survivors receive justice when it seems so difficult from what you’ve described?

Dani: Well, there’s a couple, and you touched on some of them.

Potential Legal Solutions

The Department of Justice can now prosecute P__nhub. I want to talk a little about the immunity that internet platforms face. But even with that immunity, they’re not immune from federal criminal law violations. So if the Department of Justice had the will. They could absolutely investigate and prosecute P__nhub for the mass trafficking and CSCAM on their site.

So we want them to do that. Then additionally for victims, because there’s a very high threshold, to be successful in a criminal case. Because of limited resources, it’s difficult. So at NCOSE, we see the value in bringing civil litigation.

Dani: That’s where a survivor brings a civil case for monetary damages against a company. That holds them accountable. It makes them self-police. And it gets some measure of justice and recovery for the victims. Immunity prevents many of these victims from doing that. Because of that federal immunity. There’s a law called the Communications Decency Act. It was passed about 20 years ago.

And was actually an attempt to prevent the spread of obscenity and CSCAM on the internet. But the court struck it down, finding it unconstitutional, and kept only one part of that statute.

And the part of that statute that it kept was Section 230, and that was a good faith law. It shields protection for platforms. The statute meant to try to limit the spread of some harmful things on the internet. And if you do that in good faith, you’re immune from civil liability and state criminal liability. So even if your husband filmed you with a hidden camera and uploaded it, there may be no consequences for it.

Dani: Then the whole thing was struck down. We were left with justice immunity.

If Your Husband Filmed You With A Hidden Camera: Section 230 and Platform Immunity

It was interpreted extremely broadly, because this was at the beginning of the internet. The courts expressed they wanted to allow the internet to flourish and not be prohibitive. So what that plays out in reality is that internet platforms have essentially blanket immunity.

That’s why they’ve grown so large, but that’s also why they’re almost accountable for nothing on their site. Specifically, what it says is that websites or web platforms are not responsible for third party content on their site. So P__nhub’s entire business model depends on this immunity, if not structured, because of this immunity. So what P__nhub does is it allows anyone to upload any video. All you need is an email address.

You can be a child. We’ve had countless cases of minors uploading videos of themselves on P__nhub. And they say that’s third party content. We’re not responsible for that. So that’s where CDA 230 immunity has many problems. Not just with P__nhub, but also on some of our mainstream social media sites. Where there may be trafficking or abuse material. And the site’s just not motivated to self-police, because they know they could never be held accountable.

Anne: Many of our listeners are victims of betrayal. Wives of users of online explicit materials users who are abuse victims. If your husband filmed you with a hidden camera, you are an abuse victim. Also because of marital coercion, they’ve been coerced into relationships with a man. Who says, hey, I totally abide by your boundaries. I don’t look at online explicit material. I don’t visit prostitutes.

But they actually do. So they’re coercing their wives. They’re using emotional and psychological abuse because they’re lying is emotionally abusive, and gaslighting to hide their online explicit materials use.

Betrayal Trauma & Online Explicit Materials

But they actually do. So they’re coercing their wives. They’re using emotional and psychological abuse because they’re lying and gaslighting to hide their online explicit materials use.

Anne: One of the things we talk about at Betrayal Trauma Recovery. Is that a woman in a relationship with a man actively using online explicit materials, hiding it, using gaslighting and manipulation. They are going in depth wondering if it’s wrong to check their husbands phone for this kind of stuff. https://www.btr.org/is-it-wrong-to-check-your-husbands-phone/She’s in an abusive relationship. So I’m always talking about how it is always an abuse issue.

That is the issue at hand. Is it addictive? Sure, but we need to look at it from an abuse issue to treat it seriously. So knowing that, what are the solutions that would help solve the explosion of CSCAM? And other illegal and harmful content on P__nhub?

Dani: Well, there are some bare minimum things that we’d like to see, which would be age and consent verification. Because many women, I’m sure some of your listeners, have experienced being recorded by a hidden camera, and not agreeing to its subsequent dissemination, which is a huge problem.

You of all people understand. People get motivated to protect children. But it’s even more difficult to get the political will behind shutting down this type of image-based abuse. These platforms exploit adult women without their consent. There’s also the fact that obscenity law is valid federal law on the books right now. And what most people don’t understand is that although technically, the First Amendment protects it.

That’s just because, what is it, right? It could be anything from a magazine, to art, to what we see on P__nhub. So technically, the First Amendment protects the term pornography, but obscenity is not. In fact, obscenity isn’t even protected in the least.

Obscenity Law & Federal Prosecution

Dani: The court says obscenity is not speech, and has no protection. It is a crime to disseminate obscenity, it has a long legal definition, but the court has given guidelines. And said that explicit hardcord acts without any literary, political, scientific value is obscenity. That’s all the content on P__nhub. The Department of Justice can prosecute that right now. If your husband filmed you with a hidden camera and posted it, they could be prosecuted.

The truth is, when they actively prosecuted this. Which it was several presidents ago. What you see is that the content itself becomes milder and milder. The producers self-police. They know they could actually be prosecuted.

So what you get is significantly less exploited material and significantly less people being exploited. And even though this hasn’t been a priority of the U.S. federal government for a long time. There were still holdover cases that, as I think it was at 2012, the federal government got a prosecution in California. Against a producer for obscenity. And so that shows that it’s still possible. And there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be doing that.

Anne: Absolutely, can you talk about why they need more accountability?

Dani: Yes, it’s because exploitation is profitable. Many people don’t realize how exploitive these sites are. And how many people experience exploitation on even our mainstream social media sites. The reality is that it is in the company’s financial interest to have the most content possible.

To have the most users possible, to have the most economic transactions possible. Even if that means CSCAM. And at the National Center on Exploitation, we have been shining a light on these issues.

Has Your Husband Filmed You With A Hidden Camera: The Need for Corporate Accountability

Dani: These platforms know what’s going on, and P__nhub sees it. They certainly know what’s going on, and they’ve proven they won’t do the right thing on their own. They will not, and won’t even protect kids. They’re certainly not going to spend money to protect kids, and they won’t even lose profits to protect kids. So unfortunately, a sad reality is that when exploitation is profitable, you can’t leave it up to the corporations.

Anne: I could not agree more. So on that note, how can our audience help stop this?

Dani: So please support the EARN IT Act. As you mentioned, we would like to see the CDA 230 immunity go away altogether. But at least, EARN IT is a step in the right direction. So the EARN IT Act would hold all platforms responsible for the very narrow issue of CSCAM So if you have it on your site, you’re going to be accountable for that. We need this urgently, because it is an absolute epidemic.

The National Center on Missing and Exploited Children has one million reports of CSCAM a month. It is beyond the capacity for law enforcement to even investigate every case. So we need these sites to do it themselves. And the only way that’s going to happen is with legislation like Earn It. Which is fair and balanced, despite the fact that tech companies are spending millions to convince you otherwise.

So please go to our website. There are action items on how you can support that bill. We’re coming to a close session now, but we’ve made so much headway. We unanimously got through the Senate judiciary committee.

Supporting The EARN IT Act

Dani: We have a house sponsor now, and we hope it’s one of the first bills passed in the next session. So. Please support that. I think it’s one of the most urgent things we could do in the near future.

Anne: So to get information about that, their website is endsexualexploitation. org. One of the best ways to get involved with this campaign, but also the others they have, is to get on their mailing list. They send frequent emails to say, hey, take action on this now. And it’s a good and easy way to become involved, and they make it clear how to do that.

Dani: One of the things I would like to say, especially to your pool of listeners. I am so sorry that you’ve experienced what you have at the hands of online explicit material and users. If you’ve experienced being filmed by a hidden camera by your husband or if you’ve been exploited online. Please contact us, because we want to represent survivors like you. And we want to use your experience for the good and hold these corporations accountable.

So I would encourage you to contact me. If you could please put my contact info in here. We have a website for more information on potential causes of action. Potential lawsuits you may have. If you check it out, there’s a lot of information on internet platforms and how they’re exploitative. And a questionnaire that you can fill out about your experience. We’ll follow up with you, and we’d love to help you if we can.

If Your Husband Filmed You With A Hidden Camera: Reach Out For Help

Anne: If you have a story to tell, if your husband has filmed you with a hidden camera. Without your knowledge and posted it online. We have many women who have had that experience where their husband has filmed them without their knowledge. He filmed and uploaded that. So please contact them if that has happened to you.

Anne: Dani, thank you so much for taking the time to come on today’s episode.

Dani: Thank you so much. It was wonderful to speak to your audience, I appreciate you.